Semantikkbasert informasjonsforvaltning for Forsvaret - sluttrapportering av aktiviteten på semantiske teknologier i FFI-prosjekt Informasjons- og integrasjonstjenester i INI

This document summarizes the research undertaken and recommendations produced in the FFIproject 1277 regarding semantic technologies. The mandate for the activity was to study how semantic technologies can contribute in solving the problem of integrating information from heterogeneous sources First, a high-flying overview of the subject area, the basic concepts and related standards are presented. The general field of semantic technologies is introduced before diving into the technologies and standards that are associated with the Semantic Web, a group of semantic technologies built on top of the web-architecture, that have become the lingua franca for the field. The document then proceeds to highlight some promising military application areas for the technologies. More specifically, the areas are: ontology-based data access where ontologies act as an abstraction layer over the heterogeneous sources, event detection over streaming data, semantic technologies as a big-data framework, and finally the use of RDF as a metadata strategy. The focus of the document then shifts over to describing the research questions that were in focus, exemplified by using two concrete cases from the military domain. More specifically, a case involving planning military evacuation flights in a conflict zone and a case conceptualizing an information system involving accessing medical and event-based data. The commonality between the two cases is the need to collect and integrate information from various heterogeneous sources. Based on the aforementioned, the concrete research activities undertaken focused on solving problems related to federated information gathering from heterogeneous data sources, under the distinctive constraints and requirements that the military domain imposes. This produced research results of a theoretical and principal nature, yet are applicable in a wider context both within and outside the military domain. Furthermore, software was produced that facilitates practical information integration based on the theoretical results. The results and lessons learned are subsequently documented. Finally, a set of recommendations are produced regarding what activities that should be undertaken in order to make the technology ready for use both in the short and the long term. More concretely, the project believes that a data-oriented approach, using RDF, has great potential for military use. However, in order to ensure that it is realizable, the project has produced a set of recommendations regarding strategy and best-practices, as well as technologies that that warrant further focus. With respect to the former group, it is recommended that an URI strategy for naming resources in a data-oriented setting for use in the Norwegian defence is developed, together with a matching metadata strategy. With respect to technology areas, the project recommends acquiring and developing knowledge regarding graph databases as these are well-suited for analyzing large amounts of data. Another recommendation is to develop federated information gathering and querying as an alternative to traditional data warehouse strategies, which is especially useful in situations where information must be collected from sources outside the home organization and/or judicial barriers prevents local storage of data.